Have you heard the expression “Boots on the Ground?” Well our Live Dead Missionaries are the boots on the Silk Road. Here we’d like to take a moment and allow one of them to share part of their life with you. Some names and details have been changed, but this is a true story from this colorful, vibrant, and sometimes surprising region and those who God has called to work here.

We often pray to encounter people and places of peace. In fact, this is one of the deepest cries of ours hearts as workers. We pray, “Dear Lord, lead us to the thirsty and to the hungry that they may taste, see, and know how good You are!” 

In my conservative, Islamic host city of 1.2 million unreached people, the Lord graciously led me to a young woman who was and still is seeking truth. We began to have many conversations about faith, belief, and what it means to know and follow Jesus.  

One day we were out and about running errands together. I have found some of the richest faith conversations can happen when we consistently do life with the natives in our host country. We got into talking about faith again, and she shared about how six or seven years ago she was reading the New Testament and believed everything in it to be true.  

However, for some reason, it never really changed her life. Her faith grew cold, and she returned to living life her way. Seven years later she is trying again to understand the truth in a new way. 

 I told her, “I think when you were younger and learning about Jesus, you knew lots of information… but you never knew Jesus.”  She responded, “Yes, exactly. But now I want to know Jesus.”  

 A couple of hours later on the bus we were reading from Ephesians together. I asked her, “What do you need to be sure about faith?” She thought for a moment and said to me, “I don’t need anything to be sure. I am sure. This is what I want to believe. And once I know God better, I want to be born again.”  

Now, this is a sentence from the mouth of God!  

We met again a week later, and she shared with me how she has seen God answering prayers in her life. She also shared trusting in Jesus is hard, but it’s what she wants more than anything. She told me she had been praying, “God show me the true way,” and that she believes He has been, and she’s never seen things more clearly in her life. 

It is one of the most awe-inspiring and beautiful things to watch the Holy Spirit woo a child into the Kingdom and to watch that child learn to hear the voice of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the best at discipling, and I’m so thankful He is with both me and my friend day in and day out as we begin the journey of following Christ together.  

My team and I are in prayer that her four sisters, mother, and father will follow her into the family of God, and a whole household will be baptized! This is a family of peace, and their house is a place of peace. We encountered a people and a place of peace- like we, as workers, so often pray. May they all taste, see, and know how wonderful is the grace of God.